Month: June 2012

Digital. No point in plain natural instruments, their time is done. They’re a bit of a luxury too, an unnecessary expense. All you need is a computer. Garageband. Audacity. Linux. Mac. Whatever works, whatever you have. If you do have an instrument, and you really do want to use it, then fair enough, but in the New Musik it is now a mere input device, on a par with the keyboard. Use it sure. Then record it, get it in, fuck with it.

What does it sound like? Output. An end result. This diagram explains it:

Save the separate elements of a track into the New Musik GitHub repository. This is important. It means the New Musik can be built, shared and developed quickly and easily.

Save the finished track onto SoundCloud. Done. Tell people about it. Use the hashtag #NewMusik . That shows you’re part of it.

3. How do I make money from it?

You don’t, yet. Don’t worry, this is the case for music through the ages. By putting it into GitHub, it is now open source, under the GPL V2 license (CHECK THIS). Read up on that. It’s important. The idea is that New Musik will simply begat New Musik. If you’re good at it, you’ll figure out how to make money from it, or someone else will for you. If you’re not good at it, at least you took part, you can say that proudly. If you’re inbetween good and not good, you might contribute something useful to the New Musik, help shape what it is, and be very proud of that. Your contribution will be recorded in your commits, there for music historians to see, rather than debate over. However you’ll get little or no money for that contribution. To quote David Byrne: “Same as it ever was”.

1.1. Musik (slight return)

So you do have a question? What does it sound like, really? Basically not like music does now. It might sound a little like what it has previously to how it sounds now, but not very much.

4. Politics

Bit of a pain really. Sure, this isn’t a distinctly capitalist plan. However music almost always ends up about money to some extent, if it’s a bit good. And I don’t like to be exclusionary. So the New Musik has no politics at its core at all. It is just a methodology you can apply. Be left. Be right. Try not to be a twat though.

5. Fashion

Not really my strong point. Proper hats would be nice.

6. Versioning

Back to the GitHub bit. Versioning is handy for creativity, see the before, branch off in different directions, still have all the pieces you started with. Even New Musik itself is versioned. This is 0.1. It can and will change. So should you.